|
Cops arrest MDC supporters
18/03/2003 20:30 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe police Tuesday arrested dozens of opposition supporters around the country as the party embarked on mass action against President Robert Mugabe's government, police and the opposition said.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had called for a nationwide stayaway beginning on Tuesday, and many businesses and shops around the southern African country remained closed.
Police had declared the strike illegal, and in a statement released late on Tuesday said that at least 63 people had so far been arrested. Two MDC legislators are believed to be among those picked up.
Fifty-three of the arrests were in the capital Harare, spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said. Twelve were arrested for burning a bus in the low-income suburb of Hatfield, in an attack which left two police officers injured.
Reasons for the other arrests were not specified, but Bvudzijena said there had been "stoning of passing motor vehicles and barricading of roads besides petrol-bombing targets".
Bvudzijena said the mass action had been a "total failure", a claim contradicted by the MDC spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi, who said "thousands" of Zimbabweans had heeded his party's call and stayed away from work.
Two MDC legislators had been arrested in central and southern Zimbabwe, Nyathi said.
He alleged that four MDC activists had been abducted in the northern farming town of Bindura. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
|
